I've been getting a lot of questions about Pinterest lately, it's crazy! I think a lot of online biz owners, whether they sell physical products, digital products or services, are starting to realise the power of Pinterest when it comes to growing their website traffic and making sales but maybe they don't know exactly where to start. Pinterest has long been my favourite social media platform as it is awesome for traffic generation and brand awareness but this wasn't always the case for me.

I struggled with setting up my Pinterest account the right way in the beginning and spent a lot of time on trial and error to get my accounts to where they are today. Check out my travel blog and Dream Board Digital accounts. Today I want to share with you just some of my top tips for setting up your Pinterest blog or business account the right way.

Switch To A Business Account

If you already have a personal Pinterest account and you are wanting to use this as your business account then you will need to make the switch to a business account. The major benefit of a Pinterest business account is that you get access to analytics to see what is working and not working for your pins. Another benefit is that you can verify your blog URL making it easier for followers to click through and read your blog direct from your profile. All you have to do to make the switch is:

Write a Kickass Bio

Your account name and bio are going to be the first two things readers see when they come to your profile so it is super important that these are strategic and stand out. In your bio, you want to include three key things: your business name, what you do and how you help people and a call to action with a link. Obviously, having a limited space of 160 characters for your bio, you need to keep things concise so really think about what your niche is and how you are serving your readers or clients before sitting down to write this.

Verify Your Website URL

There are two ways to confirm your website URL so it shows as a hyperlink in your profile. Head on over and read Pinterest's guide to verifying your URL. There are also different instructions depending on which host you have to make life super simple.

Clear Out All Of Your Old Boards

This is the important part, especially if you converted your personal Pinterest account to a business one. Go through your existing boards and hide any that are not relevant to your business and your content. You can set these boards as secret boards if you don't want to delete them. You then want to create ten or so boards that are relevant to your niche and speak to your ideal reader and start filling these up with pins.

Tip: don't forget to create a 'Best Of' board that features solely your blog content or business products and services and is positioned as the first board people see when they click through to your profile.

Enable Rich Pins

For those who are thinking 'what's a rich pin?' A rich pin displays your blog name and icon below the pin image. It also has the title of the post in bold which makes it stand out among all of the regular pins. If you have Wordpress, then enabling rich pins is super easy:

Install the Yoast SEO plugin if you haven't already. Head to the Features tab and enable the metadata by making sure the Advanced Settings Pages is enabled.

A message will then pop up to say your pins have been validated, click Apply Now and you are all good to go.

If you have my favourite platform, Squarespace, just click here to read exactly how to do it. And don't forget to reach out to Squarespace support if you are having issues, they are the bomb.com.

Note: It can take a few days for Pinterest to approve your rich pins but you'll know when your pins start displaying with a bold title.

Keywords, Keywords, Keywords

Keywords are so important when it comes to Pinterest because this platform is not just the aspirational vision board people see it as, it is a visual search engine. You need to make sure you have a ton of keywords in your board description and also in your pin descriptions so you are showing up in your ideal client's smart feed and searches about particular topics related to your biz.

Looking for someone to take the hassle out and do it all for you? Check out my Pinterest Beauty Sleep Package over here.